Keeper of the Lost Cities Thoughts

Destroying Cities

Name three elves who intentionally destroyed (or attemped to destroy) a city. There might be more, but these are the only three I can remember.

Fintan burned down half of Eternalia, so he's the first answer.

The second answer is Gisela, because she ordered Ruy to break the force field around Atlantis and flood it. I'm not saying it was Ruy, because Gisela designed the plan, but he just carried out orders.

Having trouble thinking of the third answer?

The answer is Sophie.

Sophie told Linh to flood Ravagog and destroyed a ton of it. Again, like with Gisela, I'm officially pinning this on Sophie because Linh was just "carrying out orders," so to speak.

Now let's examine each of these city destructions individually.

Eternalia

This was the first city destruction to take place in KotLC. After Sophie healed Fintan, he unleashed Everblaze on Eternalia, burning down half of the elvin capital, endangering dozens of elves, and killing Councilor Kenric.

And now, because I'm evil, I'm going to try to look at this from Fintan's perspective.

Before the healing, Fintan's mind was broken, so when the healing happened, he was basically plunged into a situation where he was surrounded by all his worst enemies, without any context. If he didn't find a way to get out of that situation, he'd be interrogated and quite plausibly have to go through the whole memory break thing again. Burning down Eternalia gave him the distraction he needed to escape, as well as throwing the Lost Cities into chaos and proving the power of the Neverseen.

Ruthless? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

"But he didn't have to kill Kenric."

No, he didn't. I, personally, don't think that Fintan had killing anyone as a specific goal of his. He wouldn't have minded if someone died, but I don't think he specifically intended to kill Kenric. Yes, a Councilor's death did cause a lot of chaos and drama and did prove that the Neverseen were very powerful, but burning down Eternalia would have caused that either way.

I'm not saying that Fintan wasn't being a villain then. He was okay with people dying. But I don't see any reason for him to specifically try to kill Kenric.

In summary, Fintan did some very villainous things, but he did have reasons. Terrible reasons. But still reasons.

Atlantis

Yes, I'm going out of chronological order here.

I can't remember this particular attempted city destruction very well, but I'll do my best.

Gisela was facing down Sophie and her team, and decided to break the force field protecting Atlantis from the ocean so that she could force Sophie and her friends to flail and try to save everyone and get into a crazy mess.

Unlike Fintan's plan, this didn't work. Which is interesting, because Gisela's plan was carefully structured, while, as far as I can tell, Fintan destroying Eternalia was more of a reckless, risky plan.

Here's my take on that. An intricate plan is more stable, but it also hinges more on specific circumstances being exactly as in the plan. Gisela's plan couldn't account for Sophie and Keefe helping to boost Linh's ability so she could hold back an entire ocean for long enough to fix the force field. Which, to be fair, would be pretty difficult to plan for.

Fintan's plan didn't hinge on specifics as much. As far as I can tell, it was just this:

1. Set everything on fire.